Space-sound composition for a concertante, twelve-membered space-sound body
with eight loudspeakers and four instrumentalists (flutes, oboes, clarinets and percussion)
Commissioned by the AUDI Cultural Fund in collaboration with the Munich Biennale for Contemporary Music Theater.
<sabine schäfer // joachim krebs>

 

Ingolstadt museum mobile, June 19, 2002 8pm
(Second performance in the context of the Munich Biennale: October 2, 2002, 8pm, Gasteig Munich)Talk-concert with the artist couple <sabine schäfer // joachim krebs>
moderation: Siegfried Mauser

Solo improvisation on traditional non-European music
for an instrument from the oboe family

Claude Debussy
Syrinx (1912) for flute solo

Olivier Messiaën
3. Satz Bird Abyss aus “Quartet for the end of time” (1940) für Klarinette solo

Giacinto Scelsi
String Quartet No. 3 (1963)

Iannis Xenakis
Plektó (1993) for flute, clarinet, violin, violoncello, piano and percussion

<sabine schäfer // joachim krebs>
TOPOSONIC LINES N’ROOMS WITH INSTRUMENTS (2002 – world premiere)
Space-sound composition for a concertante, twelve-membered space-sound-body
with eight loudspeakers and four instrumentalists (flute, oboe, clarinet and percussion)

The spatial sound composition TOPOSONIC LINES N’ROOMS WITH INSTRUMENTS from the series of works for concert installations, which was created in spring 2002, was conceived for the architecture of the “museum mobile” in Ingolstadt as a 12-part spatial sound body – consisting of eight loudspeakers and four instrumentalists – that can be experienced “in concert”.
The sound material of the eight-channel digital playback tape – like that of the entire series of works – was generated exclusively from the “microscopic” interior sound of animal sounds and natural noises. With the help of the latest computer-assisted digital sampling technology, it has become possible to make “audible” what was previously “inaudible” in the truest sense of the word from the molecular-acoustic inner life of animal voices or natural atmospheres and phenomena. The artists refer to this process of quasi-scientific material extraction as “EndoSonoScopy” – as “inner sound representation” or better: “making inner sound audible”.

This fund of “acoustic fragmentary patterns” (samples) from the auditory micro-range of animal and natural sound, catalogued and continuously updated according to special audio-artistic criteria, forms the reservoir, so to speak, for the space-sound-poetic “excursions” into multi-channel space-sound compositions. In their large-formal structure they are subdivided into individual, multilinear-transparent space-sound milieus in permanent fluctuation between “natural – artificial”, “concrete – abstract”, etc.. They can be staged in the form of an expandable or reversible space-sound body or presented as a concertante space-sound installation.

The space-sound art project “TopoPhonien” forms the basis for a second extraordinary focus – in addition to sound microscopy: computer-aided sound distribution in space. Through the perfect synchronization between sound generation and sound movement, “naturally” moving spatial sound figures and oscillating spatial sound spaces are created, which evoke experiences similar to those experienced by humans in the natural acoustic environment, where noises and sounds move and mix in a free-flowing manner.

A special variant of the concert installations is created by the inclusion of instrumentalists, who can be freely positioned throughout the space, of the “LautsprecherInstrumentalKörpers” (LoudspeakerInstrumentalBody), which manifests itself exclusively in the shared spatial sound and forms itself acoustically-imaginatively. Here, the experiences that the musician, composer and former Beethoven and Villa Massimo prizewinner Joachim Krebs has gathered since the 1980s with his performances of orchestral and chamber music, which have also received international attention, form a synergy with the spatial sound art project “TopoPhonien” by Sabine Schäfer, for which the artist was awarded the Siemens Media Art Prize in 1993.

For further information on the work, see chapter 5. “Der konzertante RaumklangKörper” in “KLANG – ZEIT – RAUM – BEWEGUNG”.

Ensemble TrioLog München
Burkhard Jäckle, Flöte / Werner Mittelbach, Klarinette / Diethelm Jonas, Oboe
Peter Sheppard Skaerved, Violine I / Gordon MacCay, Violine II / Nancy Sullivan, Viola
Yves Savary, Violoncello / Jan Philip Schulze, Klavier / Stefan Blum, Schlagzeug